“A fine specimen of Berardius arnuxi has been cast ashore on the coast of Canterbury, New Zealand. It was made into a skeleton, which is now in the museum at Canterbury. The skeleton is complete, only wanting one of the pelvic bones. It was 30 feet long, and a young animal; not a single epiphysis is anchylosed. The cervical vertebræ, which, in the old animal evidently form a compact mass, are still partly free; the first three vertebræ (including the atlas) anchylosed, and of these the first two completely, and of the second and third the neural arches are as yet not completely united into one bone. It has ten ribs.”—Julius Haast.
The animal was 30 feet 6 inches long.
Deep velvet-black, belly greyish, tail with two falcate lobes 6½ feet broad. The pectoral fins are little above the middle of the body, 17 inches broad and 19 inches long, of a triangular form. Dorsal fin small, falcate, not very far from the chin (?). “The animal has the power of protruding the four teeth at will.” They live on cephalopods. The stomach contained about a half-bushel of the horny beaks of the Octopus, which were nearly all the same size. It was evidently a young animal, as all the disk-like epiphyses of the vertebræ are still separate, as was the case with the limb-bones.
The seven cervical vertebræ were beginning to coalesce; the first three are already anchylosed, the first two completely, and the second and third only partially, as the neural arches and transverse processes are not yet united in one bone. It has ten dorsal vertebræ; the lumbar and caudal vertebræ were not observed. (Dr. Haast, Annals & Mag. Nat. Hist., Oct. 1870.)
** Symphysis of the lower jaw to or nearly to the teeth.
2. ZIPHIUS.
Ziphius, Gray, l. c. pp. 327, 348; Synops. Whales & Dolph. p. 10.
Micropteron, Flower, l. c. p. 328.
Teeth 2, in the middle of the sides of the lower jaw. Teeth of the male large, short, compressed, truncated at the end; of female small, curved. Lower jaw often with sundry rudimentary teeth, gradually tapering in front; symphysis elongate, and reaching to the middle of the teeth in the male, and beyond it in the female. Cervical vertebræ free. Scapula with large coracoid and acromion processes.
Vertebræ 46:—C. 7. D. 10. L. 10. C. 19.